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colossi, obelisks, tombs and pyramids, which cover Egypt from Tentyris down to the islands of Elephantine and Philae; and further, the stupendous labyrinth, with its 1500 apartments beneath the earth, and as many above it, and the astounding water-works, channels, flood-gates and mounds: all this does not prove so much a remarkable advancement of the Egyptians in the laws and conditions of art, but only an extraordinary knowledge and skill in the mechanical handicrafts necessary for the erection of great edifices.

3rd. The "Chartumim" (DD), no doubt the priests, were the representatives of the learning of the Egyptians. They are described as interpreters of dreams (Gen. xli. 8, 24), and performers of miracles by magical artifices (Exod. vii. 11, 22; viii. 3, 14, 15). But it is impossible to designate such knowledge with the august name of wisdom. We need only compare the different ancient translations of that word. The Septuagint renders quacks, the Vulgate, soothsayers or evil-doers, Kimchi and Vers. Venet., experienced in nativities. And if, therefore, Moses, in consequence of his adoption by the king's daughter, was even admitted into the caste of the priests (of which the king himself was a member), and if he was even educated in all the knowledge which that caste could impart, he could not derive therefrom those elevated and sublime truths which constitute the character of Mosaism. The astronomical knowledge of the Egyptians, indispensable for the regulation of their agricultural labours, and the phenomena of the Nile, degenerated into astrology; and the science was thus converted into a superstition. But all these are mere external or secular accomplishments; we approach now the religious ideas of the Egyptians.

4th. Of the notion of monotheism, we find, in Egypt, no trace whatever. The assumption of numerous writers, therefore, that Moses learned, besides other important truths, the doctrine of Monotheism in the Egyptian mysteries, is utterly ludicrous. In general, the value of the information derived from the ancient, even Greek, mysteries, has been greatly overrated. Cicero (de Finibus, lib. i; de Legibus, lib. ii), remarks merely, that the initiated were convinced, that many deities worshipped by the nation, had originally been mortals, deified after their death; and that a future life was reserved to man. S. D. Luzzato observes: "We are justified in supposing, that the ancient mysteries, far from rejecting the pagan superstitions, were nothing but idolatrous ceremonies, which excited the contempt of such men as Alcibiades, and not a feeling of veneration, which the pure doctrine of monotheism, with its sublime truths, would have necessarily inspired." This was also the opinion of Hegel (Philosophie der Geschichte, p. 163): "In these secret assemblies (the mysteries) no pure philosophical truths were discussed, nor was, as many believe, the unity of God taught there in opposition to pagan polytheism. The mysteries were, on the contrary, ancient religious ceremonies; and it is an unhistorical and absurd conceit to seek in them profound philosophical truths."- "To trace the quadriliteral name of the God of Israel to a foreign origin, is a vain and frivolous task, a resultless toil" (Gesen. Thes. pp. 577, 578); that it is impossible to derive it from an Egyptian etymology has already long since been effectually proved); the name Jao, which is undoubtedly identical with the tetragrammaton, was only introduced by the Gnostics about the beginning of the Christian era, but is not found on any Egyptian monument (compare notes on iii. 14).

5th. The Egyptians certainly believed in a kind of after-life, and even in reward and punishment in the Hades (Amenthes), in which Osiris (here called Serapis), and Isis (or Dionysius and Ceres), reigned and judged. But all these notions were conceived in a spirit of gross materialism. Herodotus (ii. 123) observes: "The Egyptians were the first who ventured to assert that the soul of man is immortal; but, if the body decays, it enters into a new-born animal; but if it had migrated through all land- and sea-animals and fowls, it passes again into a human body; and this

migration is accomplished in three thousand years." And Diodorus (i. 60, 61) writes: "The Egyptians consider the period of life on earth very insignificant; but attach the highest value to a quiet life after death. They call, therefore, the dwellings of the living only temporary habitations, but the tombs of the dead are regarded as the eternal abodes. Therefore they bestow little care on the erection of their houses, whilst they lavish incredible attention and expence on the construction of their tombs." If we combine these two passages of Herodotus and Diodorus, we can understand: a. Why the Egyptians took such infinite pains to preserve the dead bodies by mummification, since the existence of the soul was believed to depend on that of the body; and, b. Why they strove to secure an undisturbed resting-place for the bodies in those huge tombs, carved, with astounding exertion and perseverance, often occupying the greatest part of their lives, out of rocks and mountains, covered with numberless paintings and inscriptions, and, most probably, often marked by colossal pyramids; since these tombs were regarded as the eternal habitations of man. From these points of view, the paramount importance ascribed by the Egyptians to an honourable burial is explicable; and the public judgments held over the corpses, had, as their only end, to decide whether the conduct of the deceased was such as to entitle him to this privilege.-Although these notions may form the first steps towards a refined belief in immortality, it is obvious that they are, in themselves, far from revealing the internal affinity between the human soul and that eternal spirit which pervades the universe. But the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul (metempsychosis), especially in the form conceived by the Egyptians, is incompatible with every true notion of the dignity of man; it amounts, in fact, merely to the opinion held by Pythagoras, also, of the indestructibility of matter, which changes its forms, but is never entirely annihilated. Thus the Egyptians could not impart to Moses the doctrine of immortality, which he preached from the beginning, in the history of man, who is created "in the image of God." We need, therefore, only mention, without refuting the perverse statement of Tacitus, Hist. v. 5, that the Israelites shared the Egyptian notions concerning interment, and the infernal regions, "Corpora condere quam cremare, e more Aegyptio; eademque cura et de infernis persuasio.'

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6th. Perhaps no people on earth has carried the abomination of animal-worship to such an incredible excess as the Egyptians. From the majestic denizens of the desert, and the waves, down to the harmless domestic animals, and the most diminutive insects, there was scarcely any which was not, in some district of Egypt, adored with all the pomp of heathen worship, with magnificent temples, hosts of priests and endless sacrifices; and many were even, after their death, embalmed and entombed in holy sepulchres. Even Greek travellers were struck by this extraordinary species of idolatry; but Clemens Alexandrinus (Pædag. lib. ii. § 3) gives us, as an eye-witness, the following graphic description: "Among the Egyptians, the temples are surrounded with groves and consecrated pastures; they are furnished with propylaea, and their courts are encircled with an infinite number of columns; their walls glitter with foreign marbles, and paintings of the highest art; the nave is resplendent with gold, and silver, and electrum, and variegated stones from India and Ethiopia; the adytum is veiled by a curtain wrought with gold. But if you pass beyond into the remotest part of the enclosure, hastening to behold something yet more excellent, and seek for the image which dwells in the temple, a pastophorus (shrine-bearer), or some one else of those who minister in sacred things, with a pompous air, singing a Pæan in the Egyptian tongue, draws aside a small portion of the curtain, as if about to show us the god, and makes us burst into a loud laugh; for no god is found within, but a cat, or a crocodile, or a serpent sprung from the soil, or some such brute animal. The Egyptian deity appears-a beast rolling itself upon a purple coverlet." (Compare notes on xx. 4-6). We shall, in our remarks on the ten plagues, have occasion to

dilate upon the vast and almost inconceivable extent of this superstition, and leave the reader to decide if the sublimely pure Mosaic notions of the deity can in any degree be traced to the grossest of all idolatries. We therefore omit here all reference to the human sacrifices not uncommon in Egypt, and to the other rude and abject forms of divine worship, to the veneration paid to the celestial bodies, and other objects of nature, and even to the vegetable creation, and add merely, for our own immediate purpose, the express remarks of Manetho (Josephus c. Apion, i. 26): “Thus he (Moses) gave the Israelites laws altogether opposed to the institutions and customs of Egypt," and of Tacitus (Hist. v. 5): "The Egyptians worship most of the animals and compound images; the Jews conceive God, with the spirit alone, as one deity” (Aegyptii pleraque animalia effigiesque compositas venerantur; Judaei mente sola unumque numen intelligunt).

In this whole exposition, we have not alluded to the time when the Egyptians attained to that degree of civilisation which they might have enjoyed; and an unbiassed enquiry leads us to doubt as much of the antiquity as of the extent of the learning of the Egyptians. Except the architectural monuments, many of which no doubt belong to a very remote antiquity, we have no earlier documents concerning their culture than the descriptions of Herodotus (about 440 B.C.), Manetho (270?), Eratosthenes (240), and Diodorus Siculus (about the beginning of the vulgar era), and even these authorities contain mostly but "a mixture of dry, contradictory numbers and lists of names, of miraculous stories, myths, astronomical propositions, and enigmatical allegories" (Rotteck, i. p. 132). There is, therefore, nothing that compels us to suppose that limited culture which the ancient Egyptians possessed, to have existed already at so early a period as that of Moses, who was, consequently, neither educated in the "wisdom of Egypt," nor, if this had been the case, would he have derived great and sublime truths from those sources (compare Göthe, Westöstlicher Divan, p. 162: "Whether Moses was protected by a princess, or educated at the court all this had no influence upon his character and opinions.") From 1 Kings v. 10, where Solomon is said to have surpassed "all the wisdom of Egypt," or from Isaiah xix. 11, where the "wise councillors of Pharaoh " are mentioned, we can deduce no distinct conclusions concerning the degree or character of Egyptian culture; the remark of Homer (Odyssey, iv. 231), “that every Egyptian is an able physician, excelling all other men," refers only to an empirical practice of healing by means of herbs or vegetable drugs; and the observation of Josephus (contra Apion. ii. 14), that "the study of wisdom was, in Egypt, from the beginning, committed to the priests,” leaves us equally doubtful as regards the nature of that philosophy, which we might, however, with some probability imagine, from its being coupled with "the worship of the gods." It is certainly not wisdom, in the sense of philosophy, which was only considerably more than a millennium after Moses, from Greece, transplanted to Egypt. True, Herodotus calls the Egyptians prudent and practical people (λoyiúratoi), on account of their commerce and industry; but this signifies merely their worldly shrewdness, to which they attached a high importance, so that they were almost proverbial for their cunningness and stratagems (see Bohlen, Ancient India, ii. 121). Even Juvenal (Satires, xv.), in so late a period as the first century after Christ, does not sketch a flattering picture of the religious enlightenment of the Egyptians, when he says:

"How Egypt, mad with superstition grown,

Makes gods of monsters, but too well is known.

"Tis mortal sin an onion to devour,

Each clove of garlic is a sacred pow'r.

Religious nation sure, and blest abodes,

Where ev'ry garden is o'er-run with gods.” (Dryden's Translation.)

(Compare Ovid, Metam. v. 326, et seq.) Many ancient writers thought, indeed, Egyptian learning insufficient for the education of Moses, and they call in the aid of Greek, Assyrian and Chaldean preceptors-an idea as arbitrary as it is unfounded (see Philo, opp. ii. 84. Compare Clem. Alex. Strom. i. 148). Moses has, it is true, not unfrequently based his laws on institutions of the Egyptians, or other nations, whose ideas the Israelites had, by long associations, imbibed; but, whenever he does this, he infuses into the old forms a spirit of purity which changes entirely their original perverse tendency, and which converts them into most beneficial and sublime doctrines (see note on xii. 1, towards the end).

CHAPTER III.

SUMMARY.-Moses, as shepherd of his father-in-law, leads his flock to Mount Horeb; God appears to him in a burning bush; He promises to rescue the Israelites through him from the oppression of the Egyptians; and to lead them into, and to make them inherit, the land of Canaan. For this purpose God commands Moses to return to Egypt; but he hesitates. To inspire him with hope and confidence, God reveals to him His holy name, which was not yet known to his ancestors; and orders him to ask of Pharaoh only a leave of three days to worship in the desert. God in His prescience knows that Pharaoh will not consent; He is therefore determined to inflict upon Egypt fearful plagues; then only would the king allow their departure, which they would effect after having received from the Egyptians very considerable gifts in gold, silver, and raiment.

AND Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the Midianite priest, and he led the flock 'behind the desert, and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb. 1 Engl. Vers.-To the backside of.

1. That Moses pastured the flock of Jethro his father-in-law is so natural among a nomadic tribe, whose chief wealth consists in cattle, that the opinion of Philo and many Rabbinical expounders of the sacred volume, according to whom Moses-as later David-was ordained to feed the flock as a preparation for his great mission as pastor of the people of Israel, appears as an unnecessary, though ingenious, allegorical interpretation. It must, however, be admitted, that the solemn solitude of the dreary desert materially contributed to prepare the mind of Moses for the sublime commission for which Providence had selected him, to dispose his thoughts to sacred reflection, and to mature his plans for the deliverance of his people from that thraldom which gnawed at his sympathetic heart with undiminished grief, even after a separation of nearly half a century. - About the name Jethro," see note to ii. 18; and about "priest of Midian," to ii. 16.-And

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he led his flock behind the desert. Moses
naturally led his flock from the sterile
desert which the Midianites inhabited (see
on ii. 15), south-wards behind the desert,
to the fertile and fruitful regions of Mount
Sinai, whither the nomadic shepherds
generally drive their flocks when all the
other parts of the peninsula are destitute
of water and of pasture.
The moun-
tain of God, so called by way of anti-
cipation (prolepsis), because the glory of
God appeared here at a later time to
the lawgiver. Targum Onkelos: “And
he came to the mountain where the
majesty of the Lord revealed itself."
Josephus, blending truth and fiction, ob-
serves (Antiq. II. xii. 1): " Afterwards
he drove his flocks to Mount Sinai to
feed them. This is the highest moun-
tain in these regions [which is not accu-
rate], and the best for pasturage; for its
herbage was excellent, and it had not
been before fed upon; for as the native
tribes believed that God dwelt there, the

2. And an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of 2 the thornbush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire; but the bush was not consumed. 3. And Moses said, I will just

go thither and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. 4. And when the Lord saw that he went thither to see, God called to him out of the midst of the bush, 2 Engl. Vers.-A bush. 3 I will now go aside.

shepherds dared not to approach it."—As the Mount Horeb, by the promulgation of the law which there took place, has become of paramount importance for the history of mankind, and as the Sinaitic peninsula in which that mountain is situated forms the principal scene of the wanderings of Israel after their Exodus from Egypt, it will not be inappropriate to introduce a geographical sketch of this peninsula, with especial regard to "the mountain of God." See the supplementary note at the end of the chapter.

2. Thornbush; rubus vulgaris, or rubus sanctus, or Oxycantha arabica (hawthorn bush), which grows abundantly in the vicinity of Sinai. The Septuagint renders ẞáros, bramble-which is, however, according to Pococke, nowhere found in those parts. The idea that the presence of God manifests itself in the splendour of light or fire, was prevalent throughout all nations of antiquity. In Homer (Odyss. xix. 36-40), Minerva appears in a radiance of fire. The Persians adored the fire, from the belief that it enshrouds the gods. Similar notions were entertained by the Chaldeans. God revealed himself in fire not only to Moses (in our text, and xix. 18; xxiv. 17), but also to Elijah (1 Kings xix. 12), Ezekieľ (i. 4, 13), and Daniel (vii. 9).-Josephus thus explains our text: "The fire which surrounded the thornbush did not injure the blossoms of the tree, nor did it destroy any of the fructiferous branches."-Some represent the whole vision related in this chapter as a dream of Moses, a conjecture destitute of every foundation; others suggest, with as little propriety, that Moses saw the setting sun behind the thicket, so

that the bush appeared to be in flames; others imagine an issue of phosphoretted hydrogen from a volcanic fissure!-The burning bush which is not consumed has frequently been used as a suitable allegory of the fate of Israel, which, although despised among the nations as the thornbush among the trees-oppressed, degraded, and afflicted-could never be destroyed. Abarbanel and others apply it more especially to the sufferings of Israel in Egypt, from which they came forth with enhanced vigour. The symbol of the Scotch church is likewise a burning bush, with the words beneath it: "Nec tamen consumebatur." 4. God called unto him. The angel of God, who appeared to Moses (ver. 2) is, according to our verse and the whole following relation, God himself, with a change very usual in the Holy Scriptures: the angel calls Abraham (Gen. xxii. 11), and it is, in fact, God himself (ver. 16); the angel of God appeared to Gideon (Judg. vi. 11), whilst he is in reality God (ver. 14). Similarly Gen. xxi. 17 and 19; xxxi. 11, 13, 16. Judg. xiii. 3, 22. Ebn Ezra accounts for this change in a twofold manner: 1. The angel is called God, because he is His delegated messenger; or, 2. God (Jehovah) seeing that Moses was going to the bush, commanded His angel (Elohim) to call him; "for Elohim is no proper noun, but a noun appellative, implying everything divine and incorporeal." The first explanation is more acceptable; the latter, forced in itself, would not even apply to the other analogous passages. "A similar identification of the Deity with its messengers is observable in almost every apparition of angels. Ori

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